Geneon going under?

I must be behind in anime news but I have read some articles that Geneon has split ties with ADV for some reason. Anyone have any idea on what may happen to Geneon? Especially with their past and future anime titles.

Geneon still has all their licenses, but they have no distributor since they are completely out of that business. So no new Geneon-licensed titles are going to appear on the shelf and the state of their current licenses is in doubt (as to what will happen to them). Why ADV and Geneon's deal to have ADV distribute Geneon titles collapsed is unknown. Personally, I'm hoping that somehow, FUNimation can license-rescue titles from Geneon to get all the canon Tenchi titles and have them re-translated from scratch.

Are you saying that the original TM translation was more US standards/family friendly? If so, I feel kinda cheated for scratching so much money on the original Pioneer release. As if Tenchi in Tokyo wasn't bad enough.

Funimation has a good rep with its DVD features allowing folks to switch the video between the English and Japanese versions and have two sets of English subtitles: one of closed captioning for English dub viewers and another as translated subtitles for Japanese audio. The great thing with the subtitles is that Funimation has them translated as close as possible to the original version and even include the honorific suffixes that characters address each other with.

The problem with Geneon's DVD features is that they lack the video switch option and there is only one set of subtitles for translating the Japanese audio. If you wanted to see the original Japanese opening and closing of a title from Geneon, then it's included as a special DVD feature and not a part of the actual DVD episode. The translations from Geneon, while trying to be as faithful as possible to the dialogue of the original version, often take liberties with their translations dependant on whatever is spoken and do not include the Japanese honorific suffixes.

In the case of Tenchi Muyo, there were a good number of liberties taken with the dialogue of the series into English. The best example being during episode 7 during Washu's infamous nurse scene with Tenchi in her lab. A good portion of Washu's lines in that scene were changed to reduce the sexual dialogue present in the scene as the Japanese version had her suggesting several raunchy ways in which she could get her "samples."

Ah, that may explain why I consider Tenchi Muyo a "children's anime", having watched it only in the (probably heavily domesticised) German dub version...

Ah. I neglected responding to this post.

As Gqultra stated, the Pioneer/Geneon translations were "suspect" and regarding the subtitles specifically, full of errors. Now when Geneon re-released the series on 4 discs, they did fix the worst errors, but left a lot of things that are incorrect still in there. The translator for FUNimation's release has expressed a desire to re-translate the earlier OVA episodes that Geneon currently has should FUNimation somehow get them.

It looks like ANB's secret wish may come true, as it has been announced that Funimation is Negotiating to Acquire Geneon Titles.

But it is still uncertain if they intend to 'retranslate' the material and re-dubb it, or if they are intending to secure it 'as is' for release & distribution.

I'm guessing it will be the "as is" but I will lobby my contacts in FUNimation to make an exception for Tenchi. ^_^

It would be a treat to see Tenchi Muyo re-dubbed. Funimation managed to reunite most of the original cast for their dub of Tenchi Muyo OAV 3. I could picture the voice actors being willing to do a new Tenchi dub. I'm just hoping Funi decides not to get lazy and decide just to release and distribute like they are planning with their acquisition of Love Hina from Bandai.

I would really enjoy seeing Tenchi Muyou! GXP retranslated and redubbed. FUNI really stepped on the script and 'cleaned it up' for a PG13+ crowd. The original script is very racy - almost lewd - not the FUNI's English translation even hints at what they are really saying.

If you ever get a chance to see a fansub translation of the original (or if you can follow allow with the Japanese dialogue,) then its a real treat. And its also a ding against FUNI for their 'sanitizing' one of their licensed products for the US market.

Well since Funimation has I guess top dibs on what they can negotiate, my fear is that they may take one of the more popular titles and like GXP will dumb it down to make it family friendly. If that's the case, it'll be like watching any american cartoon nowadays. Most of the newer titles are starting to get bold with the recent engdub scripts (ie: Magikano's engdub is a perfect example). Although some of it is quite funny, the original dialogue gets lost in the new script. Even worse, it gets stripped to the point where every original line get replace with an entirely new script. If Funimation goes that route, wouldn't it just be a waste of time and money to redo any of those they choose and just make them look bad?

If the ex-Geneon stuff they get ahold of has already been dubbed, I doubt if they'll re-dub it, since that is very expensive.

@Jan-Chan -- the subtitles for GXP aren't bad. Tomato tells me he did convert some "Tenchi-niichan" stuff to "Tenchi-chan" because at the time, he was new to FUNimation and didn't know what they would accept honorific-wise, but otherwise the subtitles should be fine and not sanitized.

BTW, the entire GXP series was never fansubbed. I think those went through episode 13, after which Hong Kong bootleg subs showed up for download. ^_^;

Still, I agree that there won't be any redubs. While I'm going to lobby for TM!R to get retranslated for subtitles (should they get it), that's going to be a long shot as well.

I forgot to ask this. Since TM had erroneous subtitling within it two releases (Ultimate and the re-release) and Funimation re-translates the series, are there any other Pio/Gen releases that have the same problem?